The best response I’ve seen to “A Common Word”

Below I’ve included a transcript I made (because I needed to have the text for a non-blog reason) of a new video on the Desiring God site. This is John Piper’s response to the Christian response to “A Common Word,” a document intended to promote Muslim-Christian relations.

I’ll let him explain.

Note: I did not smooth out this text except for an “um” or two; it appears just as he spoke it.

In October of 2007, 138 Muslim clerics produced a document—it’s about 20 pages in the copy that I have—called “A Common Word Between Us and You” in which they extended a right hand for conversation to the Christian church and sent it to the Pope and to any other Christian leaders who would be interested in which the main thesis was that love for God and love for neighbor is a common ground between Christianity and Islam.

And there have been a lot of responses. You can go to acommonword—I think that’s the name of it—acommword.com, or something like that, where you can find it. And there have been a lot of responses. The main one that concerns me, and the reason I’m talking here, is because I am disappointed with the response that came from the one that was published in the New York Times back in, I think it was published in November of last year, of 2007. But I have a copy of it here. It’s called “Loving God and Neighbor Together, a Christian Response to ‘A Common Word Between Us.’” And I just want to register publicly a disappointment with this document, in fact a profound disappointment with the way that it’s worded—and surprise at some of the people that signed it, some of my friends, who signed it, who I would have thought would be more careful in what they lend their support to.

Because, what’s missing from this document is a clear statement about what Christianity really is, and how we could come together to talk with Muslims from our unique, distinctive biblical standpoint. It won’t work to simply say, “You have a prophet, and we have a prophet”—which is really the way this document sounds. “We have a prophet who said love your enemies; you have a prophet who said love your enemies.” That’s the way this document sounds. I’m sure the people that wrote this document do not believe that, but that’s what it sounds like. And I’ve talked to a lot of people, and I’ve read it at least three times, and I’ve written how I would respond to it.

So I just want to say that when we speak of the love of God and even quote a verse from 1 John 4, and don’t take into account the very next verse where the love of God that sustains us Christians is the love of God that sent the Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to be the propitiation for our sins, that’s the next verse, but not the one that’s quoted into the document, we are not being—it seems to me—we’re just not being honest. We’re not saying to the world who’s reading this document, that the love of God that we get strength from is the love of God uniquely expressed through Jesus Christ as the propitiation for our sins because he died on the cross and he rose again. All of those things Islam radically rejects. So they do not believe in the God we believe in. They do not believe in the love of God that we believe in. They don’t believe in the Son of God that we believe in. They don’t believe in the propitiation that he made for us. And to then talk in vague terms as though the love of God is a common standing place is to deceive, is to be unclear at best.

Jesus is so crystal clear when he talks about this. “If you reject me,”Jesus said in Luke 10:16, “If you reject me, you reject the one who sent Me.” Muslims do reject Jesus Christ as the Son of God, Son of man, crucified, risen savior of the world. They reject him, and therefore are rejecting God. We don’t stand together on a common love of God or a common understanding of God. They don’t worship the true God, according to Jesus. He who has the son has life; he who does not have the Son does not have life. The Bible is so crystal clear that Jesus is the litmus paper as to whether or not we’re talking about the same God.

I got a great help from a good friend of mine who said this: Suppose two people are arguing about their classmates from college 30 years ago, and they’re starting to wonder if they’re talking about the same person. “She did this and she did that.” “Oh, I don’t think she did that.” “And she looked like this.” “Oh, I don’t think she looked like that.” “Oh yes, she did.” And they’re arguing. They think they’re talking about the same person, and somebody comes up and says, “Well, why don’t you just open the yearbook?” So they get out the yearbook from 1968, and they open it up, and they say, “There she is.” And the other guy says, “Oh, no no no no, that’s not who I was talking about.” And it’s all clear now. We’re not talking about the same person.

And my friend said to me, “Jesus Christ, as He is revealed in the New Testament, is the yearbook. You open the yearbook, and you look at His picture and you say, “Is that your God?” and the Muslims are going to say, “No, that’s not our God.” And then you say, “Well, we’re not talking about the same God then.”

Because Jesus said, when His disciples said, “Show us the Father,” He said, “Have I been so long with you and you don’t know me? If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the father. And so all this talk about smoothing over these profound differences and then using language to lead the readers of the New York Times and to lead the Muslims to think that we really do have a common vision of love of God when we don’t even have a common vision of God is not honest. It’s not helpful.

So I want to commend those who are stretching out their hands to Muslims. I wanna write an alternative document than this one, “Loving God and Neighbor Together,” and put Jesus Christ clear and lucid and unique and distinct and necessary like he should be, right at the center of the document. Who he is, Son of God, Savior, Son of Man, Sovereign King of the Ages, and then say, “We would love to sit down with you and commend this Christ to you as the basis of tolerance.

We do not want strife. We do not want war. We do not want violence. We do not want hatred. We want to exalt Jesus Christ as the Son of God, as the ground of why we don’t kill. We do not come killing as a way to win disciples. Jesus said, “If my kingdom were of this world, my disciples would fight. My kingdom is not of this world, therefore my disciples are not fighting.” Christians don’t fight to get people to believe in Jesus. That would contradict the very nature of the voluntary nature of saving faith in the Son of God.

So we would happy to sit down with any Muslim group and commend Christ to them and let them talk to us about their prophet, but we’re not going to smooth things over and talk in vague language about how we have the same God and the same love of God, call Muhammad a prophet, call Jesus a prophet, quote Scripture selectively, so that it sounds just like the Qur’an. We’re not gonna do that.

So may the Lord grant his church today to be faithful to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, crucified, propitiating sins, justifying and giving righteousness to those who have faith in Him, and rising from the dead and reigning over the world and coming again. And one day every knee will bow before Jesus Christ and confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. And those who have not bowed their knee before Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior and the unique representation and embodiment of the divine, in whom the fullness of deity dwells bodily, those who haven’t bowed the knee will be cast out into outer darkness. This is no small thing. Oh, may the church be faithful to her witness to Jesus Christ. It’s the only loving way to lead people out of destruction and into everlasting life.

These things are important. If you’re involved at all in Muslim-Christian missions or dialog, I pray that you for the sake of Christ and the sake of the lost will speak the truth about the glory of the deity and the crucifixion and the death and the resurrection and the unique saving power of Jesus Christ.

Author: Mark Ward

PhD in NT; theological writer for Faithlife; former high school Bible textbook author for BJU Press; husband; father; ultimate frisbee player; member of the body of Christ.
View all posts by Mark Ward